


Rainbow Colours

by kooili



Category: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Genre: F/F, Geeky, Nerdiness, Star Wars References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-19 02:00:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13113570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kooili/pseuds/kooili
Summary: A short one shot I found buried in the hard drive.





	Rainbow Colours

“Sorry I’m late...” 

Catherine was slightly breathless as she ducked under the yellow crime scene tape. She stopped mid-sentence as she surveyed the room before her.

“What the hell happened here?” she said, to no one in particular.

The brunette who was hunched over a cluster of evidence markers on the floor looked up at her.

“Neighbour heard a loud boom and called 911. The officers who arrived on the scene had to break down the door to get in. They found this.”

Sara stood up, stretching the kinks out of her lower back and sighed. She wasn’t even making a dent in the mess. This stuff was everywhere.

Catherine opened her kit and snapped on a pair of gloves. The room they were in looked like something out of a violent video game. There was shrapnel everywhere and crimson stains spattered the walls and furniture.

“Any victims involved?”

Sara nodded.

“Freshmen from UNLV.” Sara flipped through her notes to check. “One Thomas Kinney and a Brian Maddox. They share this apartment.”

“From the amount of red in this room, they couldn’t have survived the blast.”

“They did, actually. The EMT said that they had superficial burns, cuts and lacerations. The shock of the explosion knocked them unconscious but the doctor said they should come around in the next day or two.”

Catherine raised an eyebrow.

“That’s a lot of blood for just superficial injuries.”

“That’s not blood.”

Catherine dipped a finger into a small puddle of red liquid that was pooled on the arm of the sofa. Sara was right. It was too thick to be blood and had an unusual smell. She lifted her finger up to her nose and sniffed again.

“Red paint.” Sara explained.

“Not just paint…”

“Mixed with an accelerant base. Trace’ll tell us what it is but I’m smelling petrol. And look here…” Sara pointed to a pool of blue liquid a couple of feet away “… same substance, different colour.”

“Exploding red and blue paint? A bomb?”

Sara nodded.

“Probably home-made. Nick found some of the same paint in the spare bedroom. One of our victims is a huge build-your-own-model fan. Cars, aircraft, figurines. I’m marking down the shrapnel to see if it’ll give a better picture of what went on here. Your turn to play cameraman?”

Catherine removed the digital SLR from its case and started recording the evidence. The progress was painfully slow as every scrap of debris of significant size had to be tagged and bagged. Three hours and a backache later, Catherine gave up and called for a break. They were almost done anyway.

“Okay, what have we got so far?”

“Points of origin seem to be here and…” Sara pointed to a spot about three feet from where they were, “…there. Red paint on this side and blue on the other.”

Catherine took two steps over and stood at the spot Sara was pointing to.

“So, we have possibly two bombs, three feet apart in the middle of the living room? Strange place to be setting off explosive devices don’t you think?”

“Maybe it was some frat boy experiment gone wrong,” Sara ventured.

“The debris should tell us something,” Catherine said while picking up a piece from the floor.

“It’s glass and from the larger pieces, you can tell that the original container had a curved surface. Like a glass ball.”

Catherine shook her head.

“More like a tube. The curve is too steep for a sphere. I’d say a cylindrical tube not more than an inch in diameter.”

“Wait, there’re some markings on this piece,” Sara held up it up to the light, turning it to different angles several times to try and get a better look but the lighting was just too dim. Catherine looked up at the ceiling and pondered a few moments over what she saw. A grin began to form on her face.

“Sara, did you notice anything about the lights?”

“They don’t work. The tubes are missing,” Sara grumbled as she continued to scrutinize the fragment in her hand.

“Exactly.”

It took Sara a couple of seconds to figure out why Catherine sounded so smug.

“Fluorescent light tubes.”

“Glass. Cylindrical. And hollow. They must have dismantled the mounting sockets and filled them with the paint mixture.”

Catherine shook her head disbelievingly. “We’ve just spent the last three back-breaking hours sifting through all  _ this _ because of some crazy ass kids who had more time on their hands than sense?”

Sara smiled at Catherine’s description of the situation.

“Now that we know the ‘what’ and ‘how’, we have to figure out the ‘why’.”

“The ‘why’?” Catherine scoffed. “If they made these bombs themselves, then the ‘why’ is because they’re morons.”

“Yes, but even morons don’t blow themselves up on purpose unless they’re suicidal.”

Catherine peeled off her latex gloves and tossed them into her kit.

“I can’t believe I gave up my night off for this. Not to mention having to deal with Lindsey.”

Sara looked at her girlfriend with a furrowed expression. Work was forgotten instantly.

“Everything all right with Linds, sweetie?”

“Everything’s fine. She was just very disappointed that I had to break my promise to take her to the movies. Or according to her, ‘the biggest movie event of the year’.”

Sara relaxed visibly at Catherine’s explanation.

“Hey, I offered to take her. You have to be a nerd to appreciate how important this is. Maybe now, the three of us can go together.”

Catherine rolled her eyes.

“The two of you are welcome to go without me.”

“You have no sense of nostalgia,” Sara scoffed.

Catherine grinned in return.

“No, I just have better things to do than to spend two hours watching grown men swing rainbow coloured laser lights at each other.”

“Lightsabers, Cath. They’re called lightsabers.”

“Whatever…”

“… and they’re not rainbow coloured. They come in green, blue and…” Sara stopped short as a thought went off in her head. Catherine seemed to have a similar thought because she was staring at Sara with that look on her face.

“…red,” they both said simultaneously.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Depends on what you’re thinking…”

Sara said nothing but pointed at the poster on the far wall. Catherine nodded in agreement.

“Surely no-one could be that dumb…”

“You have to give them points for creativity…”

Catherine stared at the print for a few seconds and couldn’t help but burst out laughing. It was infectious and both women were still giggling away by the time Nick walked into the room.

“Hey ladies.” He frowned slightly at their strange behaviour. “What’s so funny?”

Neither woman could speak coherently but Catherine managed to wave a hand towards the wall. Nick looked between the women and the wall several times but looked no less confused.

“I don’t get it. What’s so funny about ‘The Empire Strikes Back’?”


End file.
